Good Reads: The Pointy End

The book: Piercing by Ryu Murakami


New father Kawashima Masayuki is obsessed with the fear that one day he will stab his infant daughter in her sleep. He stands over her crib many a night contemplating the way the icepick would slice into that tender baby flesh, savoring the horror of it all, questioning whether he could actually commit such a heinous act. He doesn’t really believe he would ever harm his child, but once he gets the idea, it takes over, consuming him. The only way to clear his obsession, he decides, is to murder a prostitute, stabbing her to death to expel his demons. Unfortunately for Kawashima, he picks the wrong hooker. Escort Chiaki is just as tortured and violent as he is. What follows is a meditation on violence, compulsion and how your shitty past inevitably fucks up your future and how we prefer to inflict our shit on others rather than face up to our problems.

A representative passage:
Inspired by a magazine article he’d read and photocopied in the library, Kawashima had decided to buy a knife as well as an ice pick. The article was about a thirty-two-year-old ‘soap tart’ who’d been found murdered in a hotel room, with her Achilles tendons severed. An anonymous police detective had volunteered this explanation: “When you cut the Achilles tendon, the sound it makes is as loud and sharp as a gunshot. The killer must have known that and taken pleasure in it.” Kawashima decided that before stabbing the victim’s stomach with an ice pick—or afterwards, if need be—he’d slice her Achilles tendons. He was curious what it would sound like exactly. And he wanted to see the expression on the woman’s face when it happened.

The album: Red on Chrome by Crowpath


There’s a clinical dispassion to Crowpath’s murder metal. They’re a band that understands “The Precise Art of Knives.” But for all its musical ferocity, Red on Chrome feels like one of those true crime reality shows set to music, a cold eyed, objective recitation of the details of the crime. This is far more cold and calculated than the hot blooded second degree murder of something like Rotten Sound's primal Murderworks. Instead, Crowpath mirror the way Kawashima methodically goes about plotting his murder, even writing out his plans extensively in a notebook. It’s not slasher film monsters that are terrifying. It’s that quiet guy next door who just snaps.

A representative song:  “The Precise Art of Knives”




I love how it all came through. It’s amazing how it aims on the target. A dream now in practice, so touching. Hail for the new. This bizarre violent creation speaks volumes. It’s precise and dominating. It clears a path through the everyday madness. An examples has been set, a map to follow. It’s infinite, hard and cold, absolutely brilliant. The new surgery.

First!

Your mom or your local shampoo purveyor probably told you at some point during your impressionable youth that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. While your mom probably meant you shouldn't scratch your balls and spit on the floor during your job interview, it's also applicable to our own little grindcore realm.
As I become older and more crotchety (you damn kids stay off my blog's lawn!), I'm starting to lose patience with albums that take for-fuckin'-ever to really get ramped up. It seems like two out of three records these days start off with an overly long movie sample, a squall of feedback or a slow motion riff that explodes into blastbeats after a few seconds. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but unless you've dreamed up something as cool as Pig Destroyer's "Jennifer," it's probably best to just get straight to the blasting. That's why we're all here.
While I've tackled the ongoing blight of grind bands ending albums on slow songs, I want to be more positive with a tribute to those who know how to put their foot in the door straight away.

Grindcore Bracketology: The 2-7 Winners/The 4-5 Matchups

I know I’ve done my job properly when I see you sobbing in the comments. The matches are getting more even and the choices are only getting harder from here on out. No upsets yet, so here’s your 2-7 champions. I didn’t pick em so don’t blame me.

North America
Despite some spirited defense of Noisear, GridLink’s 12 minutes of grind perfection (don’t forget the track from Our Last Day, folks) ruled the day by a vote of 11-3.

Asia and Australia
Absence (absinthe?) makes the heart grow fonder and despite not gracing our turn tables with new noise in four years, crust busters 324 narrowly out blasted left field loonies Swarrrm 9-6.

Scandinavia
What Splitter will be mourning will not be unknown because everyone should have seen Sayyadina’s victory coming. They outlasted their countrymen by a vote of 13-3 with the most robust defense of the round.

Continental Europe and the United Kingdom
Bleed for me, bitches. Holland’s Blood I Bleed talked shit and spit blood all over Cyness by 8-3. While I agree with Shantera that Massgrav won the split with the Dutch band, anyone who’s basked in the glory of Gods Out of Monsters knows what I’ve been raving about.

As always, the full updated brackets can be perused here. Meanwhile, your toughest task yet is before you with the 4-5 faceoffs. You've got until Tuesday. Now if you'll excuse me, the Blues-Sharks game is on.

North America
Brutal Truth (4) vs. Total Fucking Destruction (5)
Brutal Truth shook off the munchies long enough to drop a trio of the most essential grind albums of the ’90s. But that’s ancient history. After a decade hiatus, it’s time to ask the New Yorkers what they’ve done for you lately. Reupped and rearmed with ex-Lethargy/Sulaco guitarist Erik Burke in tow, Brutal Truth gave us a handful of songs on the first This Comp Kills Fascists and Evolution Through Revolution, a 21st Century blend of Need to Control ferocity and Sounds of the Animal Kingdom experimentalism. However, does the new batch stand up to the glory days or are they just milking the nostalgia circuit?
Rich Hoak certainly didn’t sit idle after Brutal Truth went the way of the dodo. Left with a load of free time, a love of jazz and a yoga driven rejuvenation, Total Fucking Destruction has been pushing grind into ever weirder corners with each release. Blast jazz, acoustic grind and stand up poetry screeds all get hotboxed by his coterie of likeminded cohorts. The only rule: nothing is off limits.

Asia and Australia
Agents of Abhorrence (4) vs. The Kill (5)
Any band that comes with Zmaj’s imprimatur is one to take seriously; the Blogfather knows his shit. Agents of Abhorrence earned the Cephalochromoscope seal of approval for their brew of Discordance Axis acceleration and strains of power violence with Iron Lung and Neanderthal getting namechecked. Taken together, their influences brew up an exemplary example of modern grind’s potential.
Featuring members of Super Happy Fun Slide and Fuck…I’m Dead, you wouldn’t expect The Kill to suddenly start spouting tea time niceties. Instead they set the intentionally stupid to the deliberately thrashy. It’s the point/counterpoint of lethal precision musically and the frat boy humor sentiments of “Tracksuit Pants are Thrash,” the abortion-riffic “Dead Babies” and unambiguous sentiments of “Fuck Emo” that set them apart. Agents of Abhorrence list the Kill as an influence. Who does it better?

Scandinavia
Gadget (4) vs. Crowpath (5)
Go, go Gadget grindcore. Gadget ringleader William Blackmon’s sci-fi steeped grind has only gotten more focused over two full lengths even as he’s broadened his vistas with expertly deployed downbeat interludes. Sleek, composed and poised, Gadget distill Ridley Scott’s interpretation of a Phillip K. Dick dystopia into its audio essence, alternately embracing its potential and pitfalls in ways that are consistently thought provoking and electrifying.
Crowpath’s dystopias strike closer to our temporal home – their last album was a Swedish serial killer concept that crawled out of a miasma of grindcore and power violent sludge. Maruta may have taken the sound in grungier directions, but Crowpath’s music is marked by a sociopathic sense of control that's eerie. They’re the frightening musical secrets lurking behind Jeffrey Dahmer’s everyday guy normalcy.

Continental Europe and the United Kingdom
Looking for an Answer (4) vs. Nashgul (5)
The pain from Spain will sear into your brain. It’s just a question of who does it better.
Denak descendants Looking for an Answer brew up a savage beating that harks back to grindcore greats all in the name of animal rights and crushing noise. Their raucous rage consists of to the point songs strung together into an interlocking chain of blast driven noise. The master craftsmen have increasingly refined their sound paradoxically by shedding the modern sheen, connecting with something more primal and atavistic with time.
Nashgul have blinkered themselves to the last 20 years of grind evolution. Instead they blew the dust off their copy of Horrified and took that as their template, banging out tunes derived low budget movies and zombie lore. Their musical inspirations are drawn from the same era as the films they pillage for inspiration – Mad Max, Toxic Avenger and the finer slices of the Fulci cannon all get musical nods. For all the talk of rotting corpses, unsightly horrors and other monstrosities, Nashgul keep everything appropriately light hearted and limber.

G&P review: Crowpath

Crowpath
One With Filth
Willowtip
It helps to think of One With Filth as the soundtrack to a nonexistent Swedish slasher film, something like Henrik: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Crowpath’s latest longplayer is purported to be a concept album based on a notorious Swedish serial killer, a cop charged with investigating his own crimes.
Thanks to the helpful insistence of Shanetera and Zmaj, I finally filled a rather sizeable hole in my metal listening with Crowpath. Not that I have an excuse for tardiness because Willowtip has never sent me astray.
In between the grinding and the sludging, Crowpath set down spidery guitar work that almost reaches shred speeds when the band suddenly kicks the clutch and jumps from first to fifth gear.
The unexpected drone doom goodness of “Gryningen” boast guitars as heavy as swollen corpse and late album standout, the cacophonous “Cleansed in Chlorine whips like a tornado born of pestilential, subterranean winds, carrying aloft the whiff of discarded human remains. Closer “Retarded Angel” is the sonic equivalent of a house of mirrors, warping and stretching reality in a uniquely grotesque fashion.
My only complaint is One With Filth’s production is just as muted and gray as the album art, blunting the jagged and serrated edges that make the similarly sludgy Maruta or a previous album like Red on Chrome so pointed and enjoyable. But that’s a quibble because Crowpath manage to weld early Alice Cooper’s jaundiced eye for horror to white knuckled grind and sludge.